“For the very simple reason that you claimed not to know where it was.”

“Why should I have?” he demanded. “She was the entire world to me, yes, but—” He took a moment to master himself. “Our love was a jealously guarded secret, Mr. Holmes, and I abased myself once already by mentioning it to a hired detective.”

“Men of your station do not venture upon painful and intimate subjects with strangers except out of dire necessity,” Holmes insisted. “You gambled that employing complete sincerity at our initial conference in London would terminate my interest. Your candour would indeed have bought you time enough to complete the affair had you been dealing with a lesser investigator. Even your tale of rebellious village boys vandalizing the grounds by night was a plausible fabrication. Much was revealed to me, however, by the condition of your clothes last Sunday evening.”

“I’ve told you already—my dog went after a pheasant and was caught in one of the villagers’ snares.”

“So I would have thought if your trousers alone had been muddied,” Holmes replied patiently. “But the soil was heaviest on the back of your forearms, just where a man rests his elbows to pull himself out of a hole in the ground nearly as high as he is himself.”

With a crazed look, Baron Ramsden leveled the pistol at Holmes, but my friend merely continued quietly.

“You loved Elenora Rowley with such a passion that you removed your grandmother’s wedding ring from the family vault, which you knew to be secure enough that it is scarcely ever inventoried. You then bestowed the gift on Miss Rowley, fully intending to marry a local merchant’s daughter whose beauty, or so I have been told, was matched only by her generosity of spirit.”

Here the Baron’s eyes dimmed and his head lowered imperceptibly, though the pistol remained trained on Holmes. “And so I would have done had she not been taken from me.”

“I had a long conversation with Miss Rowley’s former maidservant this morning. When Elenora Rowley fell ill, she sent you word she had departed with her parents to seek a cure on the Continent.”

“The specialists could do nothing,” the Baron acknowledged, his free fist clenched in his misery. “When she returned, the strain of travel had only hastened the course of her illness. She sent a note through the channels we’d created, telling me she loved me as she ever had—since we were both children and she the daughter of the dry-goods supplier to our household. Within three days she—” A spasm seemed to shake him and he passed a hand over his brow. “Any fate would have been better. Even my own death.”

“Be that as it may, the lady died,” my friend replied compassionately, “and before it could occur to you in your grief that she had kept your token sewn into the lining of her garments, it had been buried with her. When you regained your senses, you realized, no doubt, that the heirloom had passed beyond your reach.”

“I was ill myself then. I was mad. For the better part of a month I was the merest shadow of the man I had been. I cared for nothing and no one,” the Baron stated numbly. “Yet my brother’s many follies follow each other like days upon a calendar, and our family is not as wealthy as my mother would have us suppose.”

“A matter of accounting, then, brought the missing jewel into the public eye.”

“I would never have taken it back from her else—in life or death. God help me! All the woes my brother has brought upon our heads are as nothing compared to my own. What will the appellation ‘grave robber’ do to the name of Ramsden?” he cried. Then, calming himself with all the reserve he could muster, Lord Ramsden drew himself up to his full height, his blue eyes glimmering eerily. “Perhaps nothing,” he continued, with a new and chilling precision to his speech. “Perhaps the only other person who knows of the matter will perish this very night.”

“It is not a very likely circumstance, is it, my lord?” my friend remarked evenly.

“So you may think,” his client snarled, “but you have underestimated my—”

“I am not so foolish as to have arranged this meeting in total solitude,” stated the detective. “My friend Dr. Watson has been good enough to accompany me.”

I emerged cautiously from behind the stony outcropping.

“So you have brought your spies!” cried the Baron. “You mean to ruin me!”

“You must believe, Lord Ramsden, that I have no intention of causing you the slightest harm,” Holmes protested. “My friend and I are prepared to swear that no word shall be breathed of this business to any living person, provided the ring is returned.”

“It is here.” The Baron placed his hand over his breast pocket. “But do you speak in earnest? It is incredible.”

“My little career would soon enough suffer shipwreck if I neglected my clients’ best interests,” my friend averred.

“Not the police, nor my family, nor any other person will ever hear of the matter now I have retrieved the ring? It is far more than I deserve.”

“They shall not on my account. I give you my word,” Holmes declared gravely.

“As do I,” I added.

“Then that is enough.” The Baron’s head fell forward as if in a daze, exhausted by his grief.

“It is not the first felony I have commuted, and I fear it is unlikely to be the last,” confessed my friend in the same calming tones.

“I shall be eternally grateful for your silence. Indeed, your discretion has been unimpeachable throughout this affair, which is far higher praise than I can apply to my own.”

“There I cannot agree with you,” Holmes began, but the Baron continued bitterly.

“Ellie died alone rather than betray my trust. What have I offered her in return?”

“Come, my lord. It is hardly practical to dwell on such matters. You acted in the interests of your family, and your secret is safe, after all.”

“No doubt you are right,” he whispered. “You may proceed to the house, gentlemen. It is over. I shall be more silent hereafter, you may trust.”

I had turned to go, but suddenly an inarticulate cry from Holmes swung me round again. The pistol fired just as Holmes, in a desperate leap, reached the Baron. My friend caught him round the torso and laid him on the frozen ground. I was beside them in an instant.

“Quick, man! He breathes—can you not—”

But Lord Ramsden had already passed beyond the aid of any man. As I loosened his collar, he emitted a low, shuddering sigh and was still.

“Holmes, he—”

“He is dead.” My friend passed a hand over the Baron’s eyes, his suavity of movement dulled in the shock of the tragedy. “If only I had—but Lord Ramsden would surely have revealed himself otherwise! No, no, Gregson is an ass, but he can see a brick wall when it is in front of him. Only I could have returned it in safety.” He descended quickly and removed a glittering band from the upper waistcoat pocket of the dead man.

“What he must have seen to retrieve it,” I muttered in horror.

“God help us, Watson.” My friend, though outwardly serene, was as shaken as I had ever before seen him. “I would not wish his history on any man.”

We knelt in silence under the black shadows of the trees, slowly growing cognizant once more of the piercing cold.

“What are we to tell them?”

“There, at least, our course seems clear,” Holmes considered. “You and I heard a shot from just beyond the grounds and, considering the hour, went to investigate. We found the Baron already beyond assistance. That is all.”

I nodded. “I suppose the pressures of financial ruin could account for suicide in a man of sensitive nature, but what of the ring?”

“As for the ring, I am prepared to go rather further,” Holmes replied softly. “The Baron thought his life a threat to his secret, and I have no intention of allowing his death to be one likewise.”

The grief which seized the household when we returned with our sad burden and raised the alarm was pitiable to behold. The lady of the house, in the loss of her eldest son, seemed to forget her mother’s ring had ever existed. Finding ourselves quite useless amid the chaos, we arose early the next morning to stop at the inn and bid farewell to Inspector Gregson and the constable he had brought from London to aid in the investigation; they had taken over a suite of rooms, using the simple parlour as an office. The inspector, in his own unique way, expressed considerable distress at our sudden departure.